M'athchomaroon!

If you like sci-fi or fantasy, you’ve probably noticed the subtitles. Klingon in "Star Trek," Na’vi in "Avatar," and Dothraki in "Game of Thrones" are each as full and complex as any “natural” language like Tagalog, Turkish, or Gaelic. Even the mere handful of Parseltongue lines in "Harry Potter" had a designed grammar and vocabulary.

Why do these modern epics include constructed languages, or “conlangs”?

Long story short, conlangs started to catch on more than 50 years ago when J. R. R. Tolkien made it cool. Since then, it’s become standard for a cable network like Syfy to hire a linguist to design a language for the alien characters in a new show.

Using a language the audience doesn’t know is like designing detailed costumes and architecture; it makes the fictional world feel that much more real. But why go to the trouble of designing a new conlang when you can use a natural language?

Let’s look at a potential fictional culture. Let's say they’re barbaric and unrealistically brutal, and that’s all the audience needs to know because we want our heroes and heroines to look merciful in contrast. We want to give them a suitably brutal-sounding language so our audience really gets the point we’re going for. What language should these quintessential barbarians speak?

Should they speak German? Hebrew? Arabic?

While each of those languages can sometimes sound “harsh” to a native English speaker, they also have a lot of real-life history and culture behind them. Choosing a natural language for a fictional culture can accidentally be unfair and disrespectful to that language’s real-life speakers because choosing a culture’s language connects the real and fictional cultures. (If an alien culture starts to speak Latin, get ready to see pillars, togas, and an imperial senate.)

But a conlang can be as specifically tailored to your artistic message as you want: Klingon is harsh and violent, Orkish is gross and coarse, Elvish is elegant and lyrical.

And when a language is being designed from the ground up, writing the culture’s themes and values into the grammar and idioms comes naturally. Remember that scene in "Avatar" when the researchers explain the significance of the greeting “I see you”? The best conlangs are packed full of similar easter eggs that further enhance and define a fictional culture for the story’s fans.

Conlang design is an intense creative process, requiring a working knowledge of every aspect of linguistics and months of dedication. Expert conlang creators like J. R. R. Tolkien ("Lord of the Rings") and David J. Peterson ("Game of Thrones" and others) have done more than just make a fictional world feel more real. A good conlang tells us more about its speakers.

Thanks largely to the popularity of "Game of Thrones" and "Star Trek," the conlang community has exploded over the last few decades with amateur creators designing their own languages and helping each other learn. If you’re interested in learning more about the craft and how it’s done, the Language Creation Society has many resources, and the Conlang Wiki has many more.

Namarie!